Journal

The Walking Bruise

You know how it is. New year wouldn’t be new year without some doomed, pitiable attempt at self-improvement. If it weren’t for these annual, agonising short term traumas, how would we even know a year had passed?

For me (as with so many), it’s fitness. As you may recall, I sprained my ankle badly last year, just when I was making some irregular attempts to go running again. It was worse than I first thought, and even my friend Alison’s prediction that I wouldn’t be able to get back to it for six weeks or so proved hugely optimistic. It was only over Christmas that I felt confident it had healed enough to take a little punishment, and that was nearly three months after the accident.

Of course, I could have bided my time, looked after myself, and prepared for when I’d be able to resume regular exercise again. That would have been the sensible thing to do. Instead, I somewhat let myself go. Actually, that probably understates the matter. More precisely, I let myself go, picked myself up again, rolled myself in transfats and booze, set myself alight, stamped over myself with muddy boots to extinguish the blaze, then flushed the whole mess down the toilet.

In case I’m being unclear, I’m not feeling at the peak of physical robustness right now.

So this week, a new fitness regime (which sounds terribly proper, written down like that) began. Five days, five workouts, and the weekend to recover. As I write, it’s Thursday, and I’m four for four. I’ve also spent the week hobbling around like a withered geriatric, struggling to pull myself out of chairs or get down stairs unaided. It’s all rather pathetic, but at the same time makes the point quite neatly. I really do need to get fitter.

The week started with a fitness test thing, whereby numerous activities were flown through to establish some sort of baseline of my current fitness (result… mostly ‘below average’, quelle surprise). The idea is that, when I do the same thing in six weeks or so, I will notice slight improvements to my performance, and thus pat myself on the back, awash with new motivation. The test hurt, and I’m hoping that this, rather than the normal workouts that have followed, is the main reason I feel like a big, walking bruise.

Still, nearly there. I just need to haul my aching self out of bed and make it run around a bit tomorrow morning, while my body howls at the injustice and demands to know what it’s done to deserve this, and then I can stop for the weekend. It’s nice to have something to look forward to.

So what self-imposed torments do you intend to endure until around about the 10th of January, when you inevitably decide that life’s too short?